ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – A St. Louis University basketball player is picking up a lot of new fans, not for his play on the court, but for a viral video that shows him and a friend helping a homeless man.

The YouTube video shows Austin McBroom and his buddy Blake Carelli picking up Mike from a downtown sidewalk.

McBroom says Mike said he wanted something to eat, a haircut—Mike’s first in several years, he says—and some new clothes.

“We just asked him, ‘What do you want to do?'” McBroom says. “We told him that it was his special day.”

So, Austin and Blake took care of him with $200 dollars they’d been saving up for the day.

McBroom says it’s the kind of thing that was instilled in him by his parents.

“They made me realize that there’s a lot of people out there who are less fortunate than I am,” he says. “So ever since I was little, we talked about how there are those people out there.”

He’s done this kind of thing before, he says, but decided to videotape it this time to encourage others.

“They may not go out and help someone the way we did, but just give back in some way,” he says. “Just to let them know that they tried and did everything they could to make someone’s life better, and to change the world in some type of way.”

McBroom says he and Blake hope to help one homeless person a month. They’ll also go back and check on Mike—and maybe even take him to a Billikens game next season.

Brian Kelly is a Florissant native who returned to KMOX in 2009 after a seven year absence. He first worked for KMOX News from 1997 through 2002.
Brian is a general assignment reporter, who enjoys providing live reports from the scene of breaking...